Here’s something I’ve been up to over the last few months.

In my online rental business, we rent a lot of projectors, and people who rent projectors often want to rent projector screens. Unfortunately projectors screens don’t work well in the online rental business, because existing projector screens don’t ship back and forth without hassles and damage.

This spring my rental staff and I decided to tackle this problem by designing and manufacturing a new type of screen. We were afraid we would not succeed in meeting our design goals of damage-proof, cost-effective, hassle-free shipping and packaging, but we had to try. We went through several prototypes, and encountered more design challenges than we expected. It was great fun, and we succeeded. The result is the AnyWall projector screen. It ships safely and economically in a tube and hangs on any wall.

Now our projector rental customers can get a projector screen rental too.

I think the biggest lesson for me in this project is to start sooner next time. I knew about the need for a couple of years, but I couldn’t envision a design that would work, so I didn’t start. In the end once we committed to the project, we found ways to solve the remaining problems.